Who is the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition?

Our mission is to reverse the trend of mass incarceration in Colorado. We are a coalition of nearly 7,000 individual members and over 100 faith and community organizations who have united to stop perpetual prison expansion in Colorado through policy and sentence reform.

Our chief areas of interest include drug policy reform, women in prison, racial injustice, the impact of incarceration on children and families, the problems associated with re-entry and stopping the practice of using private prisons in our state.

Friday, June 22, 2007

It's one of those hush hush provisions that happens quietly without a lot of fanfare. We would like to see the law actually changed although this is a good start.

h/t to Talk Left....the annual and aggregate limits on how much individual students can borrow fromthe federal loan programs, a top priority of private college officials. Nor doesit cut the interest rate on subsidized student loans, which the House bill wouldslash in half over five years.The Senate legislation would also eliminatefrom the federal financial aid application a controversial question askingwhether applicants have been convicted of drug possession while receivingfederal student aid. That question has been used to identify and stripfinancial aid from thousands of students. While the Senate bill would leavethe drug possession penalty in the law, dropping the question from the federalfinancial aid form would make enforcement of the provision very difficult.“We’re thrilled that the committee has acted to make sure that students withdrug convictions will no longer be automatically stripped of their aid and willbe able to stay in school and on the path to success,” said Tom Angell,government relations director at Students for Sensible Drug Policy. “While itwould be more appropriate to simply erase the penalty from the lawbooksaltogether, we support the committee’s effort to make sure that students withdrug convictions can get aid just like anyone else.”